>>406693490mm f2 for wildlife, I would have never made that connection. I thought that was for portraits only.
But I think you have a point on the focal lengths. I have the 70-300 partly because it was comparatively cheap, and because of FOMO on the far focal lengths, but most of the pictures on the far end look like ass, and many of the shots on the short end is straining against the 70mm stop and cutting off my subject. I think I would have been better off with the 50-140mm f2.8 for the brighter aperture and not having to switch lenses for near or large subjects, and in general spent more time learning to get closer.
Actually avoiding the expensive 16-55 f2.8 and 50-140mm f2.8 has probably been a bit of a false economy, because only owning those two would have been cheaper than all the other expensive junk I've accumulated, yet would have been far more usable in the real world.
